


reel me in

by ghoulgy



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Medical School, Self-Esteem Issues, a very small percentage of the symbolism in this makes any sense, formation of support systems, one or two Soft Emotions, perhaps the most Tender svt fic i have churned out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14598879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulgy/pseuds/ghoulgy
Summary: Sometimes, when the loneliness is too much to handle, when it weighs down on Mingyu’s chest and punches the air out of his lungs, he stares out into the night from the balcony. Picks out stars and makes up constellations. Gives them names.Considers what it means to be in love with two people at the same time.





	reel me in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shoulders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoulders/gifts).



> for The 97z Stan. ur basically the reason im into svt at all and i really have to thank you for that bc they r a Hoot and id die for them now. i hope things get better soon you deserve only the best always
> 
> not sure how ppl r trained to be doctors in korea but this honestly isnt super based in medical fact or anything. its more like they Happen to be working in the ER
> 
> seungkwan isnt in this one..... we are all shocked
> 
> title taken from space cadet by the technicolors

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.  
These, our bodies, possessed by light.  
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

Scheherazade|Richard Siken

The first code Mingyu is on the emergency room floor for he spends hiding behind a desk breathing in and out like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. He’d been fine, before this, about the concept of a crash, about the concept of bringing someone back from the brink. But when it comes down to it, he winds up being about as much of a coward as his college roommate thought he’d be. 

 

He feels alone in this sea of people. The ER could not be any busier, any more swarming with people and yet… Mingyu is an isolated comic event, up in the stars, thousands of miles away from the closest living being.

 

He can hear the other residents bustling about from where he’s crouched among leg chairs and candy wrappers. The timbre of their voices say  _ yes, this is urgent, but we will come out on the other side.  _

 

Mingyu’s racing thoughts say  _ everything is urgent all the time and you are woefully unprepared for this life _ . Which is not supremely helpful.

 

Perhaps the rattling of his bones is loud enough to mask the footsteps approaching his hiding place. Or maybe he simply did not want to believe they were coming for him. Either way, he jumps when someone pokes their head underneath the nurses desk he’s cowering behind and shoots him a dazzling smile. 

 

“What’s a handsome guy like you doing hidden away in a place like this?” the stranger asks, body bent over so his head hangs almost completely upside down. 

 

Mingyu doesn’t know what to say. So, he opts for a vague gesture at the open space behind the two of them. The hallways where residents and doctors rush back and forth frantically. 

 

“Gotcha,” the stranger says. Then, he sits. “Tell me, Mingyu, why are you here?”

 

The sound of his own name confuses him for a second before he remembers he’s wearing a nametag. They all are. 

 

It’s not the first time he’s felt stupid today and it definitely won’t be the last.

 

“I’m no help like this,” Mingyu manages after a moment of staring at  _ Xu Minghao’s _ name tag. “I figured I might as well stay out of the way.”

 

Minghao nods sagely, hand coming up to his chin and stroking at a beard that might have existed at some point, but certainly does not now. “Fair. But that’s not really what I meant. I meant like… why are you  _ here? _ ” He gestures at their surroundings. 

 

Mingyu is rather lost. “Like, under this table specifically? I couldn’t find anywhere else to hi--”

 

“No, stupid, I meant like… why are you at this residency program?” Minghao’s tone is full of exasperation, but the barely concealed smile on his face points towards reluctant amusement. 

 

The ticking of the clock on the wall gets louder with every set of feet that finds their way past the two of them. Every cart pushed their way only serves to amplify time, to bounce it off the walls, to fill the room with sound, with reminders of time wasted and time still left. 

 

“I guess I’m here to… help people?” Even as he says it, Mingyu knows it sounds silly. But what other reason is there?

 

Minghao smiles, a wide thing that pulls Mingyu’s mood up from beneath the floorboards. Minghao doesn’t think him stupid, doesn’t seem to think anything of him at all yet. “Good. Let’s go, then. Lots to do around here.”

 

And Minghao stretches his hand out and Mingyu  _ knows  _ he’s supposed to take it. He knows he should. But his hands are stuck his his sides like magnets, trembling, shaking in their captivity.

 

“I can’t,” he says. Saying it out loud makes it real. He clenches one fist tight by his side and pulls at his coat with the other. 

 

Minghao tilts his head, puts his hand back down. Waits.  _ Why not _ ? He asks with every blink of his bright eyes, with every second that ticks by them as they dwell in the silence.

 

The awkwardness of it makes Mingyu sweat, not that he wasn’t spectacularly sweaty already. “I can’t because… I’m not sure I should be here. I’m not sure I deserve to be.”

 

Mingyu doesn’t know what he was expecting out of Minghao after an admission like that. But he certainly wasn’t ready for the stifled giggle and the wide, vibrant smile he’s greeted with when he looks up from his knees. “You really  _ are _ stupid.”

 

Mingyu huffs, indignant rage building up near the base of his spinal cord, taking over the anxiety for a moment. It’s a weak pulse of something different, makes his heart race in a new way. “Say that again, see what happens, you fucking twig.”

 

“I stand by it.” Minghaos head lolls lazily to one side, his long neck lit by the fluorescents of the emergency room floor. “You act like you’re the only one freaking out. We all are, on some level. You’re not in this alone, so stop acting like it.”

 

Mingyu’s never had someone be so frank with him before. Perhaps not in his entire life. The anger is quickly replaced with shame and then with a long suffering sadness that’s, really, always been there when he thinks about it for too long. Minghao holds out a hand and his face softens just a bit, enough for Mingyu to catch a glimpse of compassion. 

 

“You’re meant to be here,” he says, holding his hand out for Mingyu to take it once more. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”

 

After that, Minghao is a fixture in Mingyu’s waking life. His dreams, too, but that’s an entirely different matter. One to be picked at another day. 

 

Mingyu learns a lot about Minghao in the months after their first meeting, the snippets come in slow but every single one is as interesting and befuddling as the next. He collects wine bottles, he paints, he’s never had a pear but he sure would like to try one. They form their friendship over late nights in the on call room and tearful lunches of nothing but pitiful cups of yogurt. Mingyu falls in love with him inside dimly lit pillow forts. He falls in love and he lets himself believe that he’s not in it alone. 

 

And then, there’s Lee Seokmin.

  
  


The new resident throws up in Minyu’s shoes. And that’s fine, really. 

 

He spends the rest of his shift in slippers and Seokmin spends it with his eyes trained on the horizon, never daring to look down. 

 

“You scare him,” Minghao comments in the on call room when they’re both too exhausted to do more than lay side by side in a bed too small for either of them to fit in even alone. 

 

“ _ I  _ scare  _ him?” _ Mingyu laughs, hands resting on his diaphragm, feeling the sympathetic vibrations all the way down to his core. “Has he seen himself?”

 

And truly, he must not have. Because the angular lines of his face make him look cruel and inscrutable in the way his personality does not. Sometimes, Mingyu catches Minghao staring at him over his clipboard during huddles, blinking slowly, trying to figure out what exactly makes him tick.

 

“Sometimes people are scared of the things they like.” The smugness in Minghao’s voice is barely restrained. 

 

Mingyu purses his lips. Thinks he might say something regrettable. 

 

“I’m not scared of you,” he says, turning over onto his side, tucking a hand beneath his face and letting the rush of noise outside pass right by him. Here, it’s calm. Here, the thoughts stop.

 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Minghao’s smile is as big as ever, his voice still raw from the all the crying he did earlier. 

 

Mingyu gets it, he really does. What’s best is knocking all of the uncertainty off the walls, putting up better pictures instead. “You’re really handsome.”

 

Somehow, the laughter catches in Minghao’s throat halfway. He’s a shade too upset for teasing, instead Mingyu ghosts his thumbs over Minghao’s cheekbones. Pulls him in. 

 

It’s like being too close to a TV screen, or staring at the sun for too long. The image gets stuck, and it’s all Mingyu can think about for days afterwards. 

 

The soft edges of Minghao’s face, how his eyelashes were webbed with the aftermath of tears. The puffiness there, the fondness. 

 

Mingyu kisses Minghao under the sheets in the on call room and doesn’t tell a single soul. 

  
  


Mingyu walks in on Seokmin crying into Minghao’s scrubs. Which means he almost walks right back out of the room, but he look Minghao throws his way says  _ please, god, stay. I can’t do this alone.  _

 

So, he squats down next to the two of them and puts a hand on Seokmin’s knee. 

 

“This is so embarrassing,” Seokmin chokes out between bouts of gut wrenching sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

 

But it’s not. And he shouldn’t be. Mingyu wishes he had the words to tell him how okay it is, how okay everything will be. Instead, he rubs soft circles into Seokmin’s calf, exchanges glances with Minghao, who wipes away Seokmin’s tears with the heel of his palm. Gentle, but not. Helpful, but not. 

 

What Mingyu learns is that Seokmin’s been going it alone this whole time, that he wishes more than anything he just had someone to talk to. Minghao offers their services without consulting Mingyu, but it’s not like it was necessary. Something in his soul tugs at him, tells him he was made for helping people, tells him he was made to fit into the atoms between his best friend and this near stranger. Acquaintance. Coworker. 

 

“Please don’t be sorry,” Minghao says finally, like he knows what’s going on in Mingyu’s head, like he’s intimately familiar with every thought that whizzes by. “I’m used to this by now.”

 

Seokmin sniffles, laughs, sits up straight, is radiant like a sun spot, like the sky after rain. Mingyu’s brain stops functioning.

 

“So, are you guys like dating or what?”

  
  


Minghao moves in with him. Seokmin spends nights on their couch, spends nights in their bed, later, much later.

 

Sometimes, when the loneliness is too much to handle, when it weighs down on Mingyu’s chest and punches the air out of his lungs, he stares out into the night from the balcony. Picks out stars and makes up constellations. Gives them names.

 

Considers what it means to be in love with two people at the same time. 

 

The beds in the oncall room do not fit three people horizontal. They drag two beds together while they wait for their shifts to start and the other residents stare at them with contempt. But when it’s the three of them, it matters very little what others think. Mingyu knows if he were in this alone, the despair would have a very easy time eating him alive. But he has two pairs of hands wrapped firm around his biceps, holding him above the water.

 

“I think I want to stay,” Seokmin says into Minghao’s neck.

 

He does not specify where he wants to stay. They know what he means.  _ Here, in the hours between on and off duty, in the laundry machine out back, in your skin, in your pores, your lungs.  _

 

There’s something under Mingyu’s fingernails. He itches to know what Seokmin’s hands feel like against his. Minghao slides a thumb across Seokmin’s jawline and smiles, half restrained. 

 

If this isn’t home, Mingyu is not sure what is. 

  
  


Minghao kisses Seokmin in the back of Mingyu’s broken down car in the middle of a rainstorm. Mingyu kisses him days later, in the bathroom of their apartment, on the kitchen counter, beside the fridge, everywhere he dares to. It’s easy as breathing, the three of them together. Things shift into place.

 

“Are you sure?” Seokmin bites his lip. He’s leaning against the railing on their balcony, profile outlined by the low summer sun, reflective, perfect in the lowlight.

 

Minghao squeezes Mingyu’s hand. He’s nervous. He doesn’t want to admit it. 

 

“I mean, as sure as I think we’ve ever been about anything,” Mingyu says when he realizes that just this once, Minghao doesn’t know what to say. 

 

“I just…” Seokmin trails off, tears a petal from one of Minghao’s plants and throws it as far as he can manage. “I don’t think I deserve you.”

 

Nothing could ever be less true. 

 

Mingyu understands what it is now to see something in someone they do not see in themselves.

 

He was alone, once. They all were, and something about it ate at their insides like acid, left holes where there should not have been any.

 

The secret is that they’ve got it made, that if one of them were to fall the others would pick him back up, keep him running, keep the blood pumping through those veins. Mingyu hears his own pulse loud in his ears.

 

“You’re meant to be here,” Mingyu says, and Minghao lets out a sharp breath, almost a laugh but not quite. 

 

Seokmin’s uneasy smile feels like a gateway to someplace new. Minghao holds out his hand for Seokmin to take and it says  _ you make me tongue-tied in love. _

 

This is as unafraid as Mingyu can ever remember being. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is very off-brand but i did it for izzi
> 
> my style isnt really suited for Happyish stuff sorry if this absolutely blows 
> 
> im on twt @booseoks!! come be my friend


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